So, two problems with the build.

1) The power switch is odd. It isn't a momentary contact switch. I have to keep it jumpered to keep the power going. I can work around that with a latching switch.

2) When I tried to power on the board in the case, I got a flame! I powered it off quickly.

It had all be going so well. The right board. The right case. I even found an old I/O shield that worked. The saving grace is that I took the board out and it still works.

Maybe I accidently shorted the board during installation, but maybe the power supply is bad. =(

Hi does this chassis have pre-mounted mobo standoffs? Maybe you shorted something on the flip side?

I’m really surprised for such a modern case to have latching power switch. Maybe it’s just broken?

Low-profile ISA cards are not a thing (well there are small cards but you still have to 3D print a bracket yourself). For example some OPTi931 sound cards fit half-height chassis.
For half-height PCI video your best bet is GeForce 2MX/4MX models.
There are plenty of low-profile PCI Ethernet cards (good USB alternative for data transfer)

Bruno128 wrote on 2025-03-07, 19:21:

Hi does this chassis have pre-mounted mobo standoffs? Maybe you shorted something on the flip side? […]
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Hi does this chassis have pre-mounted mobo standoffs? Maybe you shorted something on the flip side?

I’m really surprised for such a modern case to have latching power switch. Maybe it’s just broken?

Low-profile ISA cards are not a thing (well there are small cards but you still have to 3D print a bracket yourself). For example some OPTi931 sound cards fit half-height chassis.
For half-height PCI video your best bet is GeForce 2MX/4MX models.
There are plenty of low-profile PCI Ethernet cards (good USB alternative for data transfer)

The case doesn’t have a latching switch now, but I have a few spare latching switches that I use when I put an AT board in an ATX case. Instead of connecting it to the AT-ATX power adapter, I’ll take it to the motherboard.

I’ll check the power supply out of the case and if is good, I’ll reassemble everything and be extra careful.

p.s. You say low profile ISA isn’t a thing? Nobody told this guy! https://theretroweb.com/expansioncards/s/compaq-v-34-isa

I put everything back together carefully. The ATX IO shield was loose. I remember a loose shield touching the edge of a motherboard causing shorts a long time ago. I pushed it in carefully. This minuet case is a pleasure to work on compared to the AST LPX case I was working with last week. That case found a way to slice my fingers on a daily basis. So much bleeding. Hard to use your phone with bandages on both thumbs! The AM2 board that used to be in the case had 8 screws holding it in. New board is shorter and only touched 6 of the stands. I counted 9 screws. So I think that answers the cause of the short. One of the hard drive screws must have been in there.

The motherboard still works, but the onboard video has a very purple tint. I think I know what got damaged now.

Had a hard time finding a storage device that works with the UDMA enabled. Kingston 16GB MSata works. Windows 98 is installing. Blessedly, the motherboard supports booting from CD-ROM, because installing from floppies wasn't going to be fun and I had trouble

And I'm whipping up a second set of 3d printed low profile brackets. Turns out that low profile brackets are mirror images of full height. Did not know that.

Since it seems like I got the onboard UDMA to working, I've got the two cards picked out:

1) Geforce 4000MX, because I got one, and the integrated video output seems messed up.
2) NEC based USB 2.0 card, because I want to wire up the front panel. The completionist in me wishes I had firewire too, but I if I have to skip something, that would be it.

douglar wrote on 2025-03-08, 21:30:

I put everything back together carefully. The ATX IO shield was loose. I remember a loose shield touching the edge of a mother […]
Show full quote

I put everything back together carefully. The ATX IO shield was loose. I remember a loose shield touching the edge of a motherboard causing shorts a long time ago. I pushed it in carefully. This minuet case is a pleasure to work on compared to the AST LPX case I was working with last week. That case found a way to slice my fingers on a daily basis. So much bleeding. Hard to use your phone with bandages on both thumbs! The AM2 board that used to be in the case had 8 screws holding it in. New board is shorter and only touched 6 of the stands. I counted 9 screws. So I think that answers the cause of the short. One of the hard drive screws must have been in there.

The motherboard still works, but the onboard video has a very purple tint. I think I know what got damaged now.

Had a hard time finding a storage device that works with the UDMA enabled. Kingston 16GB MSata works. Windows 98 is installing. Blessedly, the motherboard supports booting from CD-ROM, because installing from floppies wasn't going to be fun and I had trouble

And I'm whipping up a second set of 3d printed low profile brackets. Turns out that low profile brackets are mirror images of full height. Did not know that.

Since it seems like I got the onboard UDMA to working, I've got the two cards picked out:

1) Geforce 4000MX, because I got one, and the integrated video output seems messed up.
2) NEC based USB 2.0 card, because I want to wire up the front panel. The completionist in me wishes I had firewire too, but I if I have to skip something, that would be it.

Jeez, how did you manage to get UDMA working on that thing? I tried both some old platter HDDs and some smaller SSDs with no luck. If you set the RAM divider to 4 instead of 3 that CPU will probably OC to 300mhz BTW. Also, the onboard video is kind of crap and has poor DOS compatibility. It's an impressive achievement they crammed most of the subsystem (only the DAC IIIRC is in the Cx5530 companion chip) along with the memory controller and some other stuff onto the same die with the CPU, but its not a good graphics option outside of basic office stuff.

Jackal1983 wrote on 2025-03-08, 23:40:

Jeez, how did you manage to get UDMA working on that thing? I tried both some old platter HDDs and some smaller SSDs with no luck. If you set the RAM divider to 4 instead of 3 that CPU will probably OC to 300mhz BTW. Also, the onboard video is kind of crap and has poor DOS compatibility. It's an impressive achievement they crammed most of the subsystem (only the DAC IIIRC is in the Cx5530 companion chip) along with the memory controller and some other stuff onto the same die with the CPU, but its not a good graphics option outside of basic office stuff.

Well, perhaps I abbreviated too much. What I should have said was that I finally found storage that the onboard IDE controller was able to detect the device while the BIOS was set to UDMA = auto. We'll have to see if I get the driver to work in Windows.

Doing the third print on the slot covert for the Geforce for the 3rd time. Holes needed shifted to the side by 2.5 mm.

I need a pair of 9pin USB headers to supply the front USB ports on the case. I was thinking of using one of these to provide the USB headers pictured below. Looks like the device takes a 9pin USB header and makes it into 4 USB headers. The device brings in two sets of USB signals from the usb header. Power and Ground look common and travel on the back of the card, but but on the front,one set of USB data signals goes to the end most half of the J2 connector and the other set of data signals goes to the hub-chip that does the other 7 USB sets of data pins on the card. I've got a Adaptec AUA-2000C card. I can solder a 4 pin to it for an internal port. So I could probably do OK if I plug those 4 pins into to the side that goes to the USB HUB, and get three fully working USB headers and 1/2 working header on J2.

The ECS P5GX-M is a bit cranky under windows 98se. Boots fast, Runs OK, fussy drivers.

And , no, it's not been agreeable to the idea of UDMA under windows in the least so far. DOS benchmarks suggest PIO4.

I am going to try to adapt an ALS120 based Asound Gold AS007 to give an AC-97 pinout for the front panel so I don't have to rout cables in from outside the back of the case.

While I'm waiting for the parts to arrive that I need to finish the build, I started putting together a counterpoint to the anachronistic MediaGX build.

It's a Dell OptiPlex GX Pro with a Pentium Pro 200. It was a top of the line workstation in 1996, intel through and through. Boy is it a pain. I like to use 16GB Kingston Msata storage devices, because I got a bag of 20 of them for very little money and they can be pretty fast. The MediaGX picked it up no trouble and booted from CD. Even after installing the latest BIOS, there's no CD boot and doesn't properly support LBA. Doesn't work with EZ drive either. I'll get it installed eventually. Might end up going back to SCSI.